Alpha 6 Links!

[Jeff]

The Alpha 6 leaked build is here! A "leaked build" is when John and I literally grab the latest SVN build and package it up for you guys. It is not necessarily condoned by David, Phillip, and Aubrey, but we want to keep you guys in the loop and give you stuff to play with regularly!

There are some rumors about a blessed build coming in the next few weeks. There are also some rumors that the Mac GUI is almost ready.

New in this version: http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/12/happy-a ... 6-is-here/

P.S. be sure to delete your shadow caches! Just delete the whole Program Files/Wolfire Games/Overgrowth directory and you should be fine.

For Mac OS X, the cache lives at ~/Library/Application Support/Lugaru 2/Data/.

Also, press P to toggle wireframe stuff.

Windows: http://cdn.wolfire.com/alpha/a6-win.msi
Mac OS X: http://cdn.wolfire.com/alpha/a6-mac.zip

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PPC and Linux builds are currently being worked on by Ryan Gordon -- they will be coming soon (?). Sorry for the delay. :<

[Ltp0wer]

Over 200mb guys. itsa gettin' bigger.

[Zaphon]

Awesome! Checked it out now-- Lookin' good!
The backpack is a superb model, by the way : )

[Ozymandias]

Still doesn't let me play it.

[Johannes]

No more OpenGL errors on startup! =D nice.
The new skybox really makes it feel expansive.
Other than the missing mac Gui, it's awesome, although one of those 'beams' in the house has a 'twitching' (for lack of better term) texture, and the game crashes when I tried selecting and moving it.

[Mango]

Gah Google, get Chrome out on Mac.

Guess I'll download the Windows version this week.

EDIT: Wait a sec, now that I've read the actual post...

There are also some rumors that the Mac GUI is almost ready.

Thanks for the hint

[turbochop]

Has anyone ever noticed that when you look at any group of objects up close, there is a drop in framerate? Ive noticed this problem since the joshua tree was first introduced.

[Hal1989]

Has anyone ever noticed that when you look at any group of objects up close, there is a drop in framerate? Ive noticed this problem since the joshua tree was first introduced.

I did notice that in other games. In Counter-Strike Source, the closer you are from smoke, the lower the fps will be, tough it may not be a good example, lol XD

[Ltp0wer]

Has anyone ever noticed that when you look at any group of objects up close, there is a drop in framerate? Ive noticed this problem since the joshua tree was first introduced.

Haha, that's not a "problem"
That is typical in any game.

More stress = less frames.

[Hal1989]

My guess (correct if I'm wrong) is when you get closer on a object, the details get more apparent, meaning it stress more, thus less frames?

Tough It depends on certain situations, like this one.

[Rorschach]

Wow this is big. Thanks for updating so often!

Just finished uploading, I'm sadly only getting 1 or 2 frames per second. I'm on a Macbook Pro.

[turbochop]

No, I'm not talking about smoke or other particle effects like that (computers hate that stuff up close), I'm talking about objects in general.

When I view this house from afar, I get about 300 frames.

But when I get close, the FPS drops a little.

I dont know if this normal or not, I haven't noticed it in other games.

[Hal1989]

The smoke was just an example...

At the look of it, no objects except the plants drop fps when close. I know some games suffer fps drop when close from grass, like Oblivion and Falout 3. How many polygons are in those plants anyway?

[Johannes]

Overgrowth uses parallax mapping on the surfaces of the building materials. The more of the screen is occupied by a texture that uses this technology, the more the Framerate will drop, since it is done on a per-pixel basis. I'm guessing another factor is that it might not be as optimized as it could be, and also simply because it's very processor expensive regardless.

Similar things happen in other games, largely with smoke particle effects like in Left 4 dead when you shoot at a wall at close range, or in the original halo when particle effects were set too high, and every close explosion caused half a second lag.
Ofcourse these examples were only on my computer, and a better machine would not have such issues, but a framerate drop would occur none-the-less.

[Jeff]

We have not even begun to optimize most of the stuff.